The 5 Best New Songs We Heard This Week: Jenny Lewis, Jeff Tweedy

By Jillian Mapes

June 6, 2014

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Let’s call this week’s edition of our best new music column “your high school indie idols making good.” Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy released excellent new singles that speak to where they’re at in their lives now, instead of trying to relive the earlier glory days.

Jenny Lewis — “One of the Guys”

J-Lew, all-time indie lady crush, releases an anthem for the over-30 independent women. Sitting atop a Beck-produced melody that bridges the gap between Laurel Canyon rock and music-box tunes, Lewis sings the finest ode to the biological clock: “No matter how hard I try to be just one of the guys, there’s a little something inside that just won’t let me” and the kicker, “I’m just another lady without a baby.” Lewis’s third solo album, The Voyager, is out July 29.

On September 16th, Wilco leader Jeff Tweedy will release his first solo project, titled Sukierae. On it, he teams up with his 18-year-old son Spencer, a drummer, as well as a slew of friends. So if you were wondering if it was possible for Tweedy to get any more ‘cool dad,’ he went there with this groovy sing-along jam, which eventually devolves into reverbed riffs and an echo of “yeah yeah yeah yeaaaah.”

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Tearjerker — “You Can”

If Sigur Rós went through a shoegaze period, it would sound a bit like Toronto’s Tearjerker. This comes across most poignantly in the anthemic “You Can,” off Tearjerker’s new EP, Hiding, which features the sort of sentiment I take away from a song like “Hoppipolla” despite its lack of intelligible language: “You can’t bring it back but you can make it last.”

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Caribou — “Can’t Do Without You”

The beat never really drops — this isn’t “EDM” after all — but about halfway through “Can’t Do Without You,” the song seemingly comes into focus. From that point, it builds slowly to an anxious crescendo of many before retreating back to just being one man’s neurosis, alone in a room. Dan Snaith, aka Merge’s Caribou, releases his comeback of sorts, Our Love, on October 7.

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Neko Case & Kelly Hogan — “These Aren’t The Droids”

I realize this is goof track about, basically, Reddit assholes, but I have to hand it to Case and her longtime vocal collaborator, Kelly Hogan. The way to get people who don’t care about feminism is through humor. And this is goddamn hilarious.

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Bonus: Not a song, just Courtney Love talking about developing glitter roses in her name. God bless the unwavering weirdness of this woman.